A winback campaign (also called a re-engagement campaign) is an automated or manual marketing sequence designed to re-engage customers who have become inactive - typically defined as customers who have not purchased within a window that exceeds their expected repurchase cycle. For most Shopify brands, a lapsed customer is defined as one who has not bought in 90-180 days, depending on category and average purchase frequency.
Winback campaigns differ from ongoing retention marketing in that they are specifically targeted at customers who are already showing signs of permanent churn rather than customers who are actively engaged. They represent a last meaningful intervention before a customer is permanently lost - and recapturing a lapsed customer, while more expensive than retaining an active one, is still significantly cheaper than acquiring a brand new customer.
A high-performing winback flow in Klaviyo typically runs 2-3 emails over 1-2 weeks. The first email re-establishes the relationship without a discount - acknowledging the gap and highlighting what is new or improved since the customer's last purchase. Many lapsed customers respond to this without any financial incentive; offering an immediate discount trains customers to wait for one. The second email (3-5 days later) introduces a time-limited offer - a percentage discount, free shipping, or a free gift with purchase - for customers who did not convert from the first. The third email (7-10 days later) creates urgency: the offer expires soon, this is their last chance. For customers who do not respond to any of the three emails, the standard practice is to suppress them from regular marketing sends (sunset flow) to protect sender reputation and list health.
The winback campaign is the last-resort layer of a complete customer retention strategy. Brands with strong post-purchase flows, loyalty programs, and RFM-based segmentation will identify at-risk customers earlier - before they fully lapse - and intervene with lighter-touch re-engagement. The winback campaign catches the customers who slipped through those earlier interventions. Tracking winback campaign performance by cohort reveals whether the customers being recovered have meaningful lifetime value or are low-quality single-purchase buyers unlikely to repurchase even after an incentive.
One sequencing note: build the sunset rule before the winback flow, not after. Without a defined exit, a winback becomes a permanent re-send loop against addresses that will never open again, and deliverability degrades across every other flow. It also helps to set the lapse window from your own repurchase curve rather than a default 90 days. Getting both right is email and SMS flow work before it is copywriting, and it only pays off inside a broader customer retention and loyalty program.
The winback flow described here is a repair mechanism, not a retention strategy — it exists because something upstream, usually the post-purchase or loyalty experience, did not hold a customer’s attention long enough to prevent lapse in the first place. For the earlier-stage tactics that reduce how many customers ever need a winback flow, see this guide to ecommerce retention strategies.
.png)
.png)
